you make that "end boss" look easy! Mine sedan has a little more rust but in the same places, when i get my shed back ill be stripping it back to weld up!she should last another 40 years when its all done!

My next goal is to get some more POR-15 and cover the lower half of the engine bay, the bottom of the rockers, the floor pans and the spare tire well in the trunk with the stuff just to make sure this thing doesn't feel like rotting again!

Assume you've found the Japanese supplier of POR stuff? They sell on YAJ and direct too... Neko.

Thanks for hte comments guys!Kuroneko, Straight sells POR15 and fortunately, they have a shop here in Nagoya! It's a bit of a drive, but it's the genuine stuff. Mrflibbles, I sure hope it lasts another 40 years, haha. Although, to be honest, I got a bit ahead of myself when I said there was no more welding to be done.

Speaking of welding, I forgot the I had to do something about my seat mounts. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why someone would take out the seat mounts and then screw them back in. So I decided to pull as many of the screws out as I could and then weld the guys in place.

It was at this point that I realized someone pulled the mounts out because they wanted to lower the driver's seat! You can see here how much shorter the rear mounts are.

It's not just the rear mounts either, here's what the factory front mounts look like.

And this is what the shortened mounts look like.

Since I'm the better part of 6' 3" (nearly 195 cm) I figured that that wasn't such a bad idea. So I welded the guys right back into place at the same height they were at.

Next up there was spot in the spare tire well where the metal had torn. The exhaust hangers are welded directly to the bottom of the spare tire well and time had taken its toll and ripped the steel a bit. So, I kept right on welding and welded that tear right up.

My next goal was to remove any remaining body filler and see if there was any surface rust building beneath. In doing so, I revealed this hole on the driver side rocker.

So, I patched it right up!

You can see how close it was to my previous repairs here. The filler was so thin I thought it was just thick paint, oops.

Next I discovered this rusty bit on the surf line fender on the driver side.

Ya, that didn't last long.

On the passenger side, I was removing more putty and discovered this hole that was just filled completely with body filler!

Since it was right in the curve at the front of the wheel arch cutout I knew this one was going to be tricky. So I cut some steel, bent it as best as I could and welded it in place. It's still going to require some filler to look good, but for the most part it should be much better than what was there.

Next I wanted to get the Bellett out for a proper clean so that I could paint the floor pans, rockers, bottom half of the engine bay and trunk with POR-15. So I rolled her out into the sunlight.

This meant rolling out the Mitsubishi and both bikes as well (my buddy is currently storing his at my place until he locates a suitable abode in Tokyo).

And since the garage was a complete disasterpiece, we decided to clean the whole place up from front to back!

Which meant pulling everything, and I mean everything, out!

The result was worth it though!

And that thoroughly wore both my girlfriend and me out! So, we called it a night after pushing the cars and bikes back into the garage. I'll get to putting some POR-15 down hopefully this week sometime!

Thanks for the comment asirike!I'm slowly getting there, I'm hoping to have it completely painted by New Years!

Speaking of paint, it was time to get some POR-15 painted on. I had a whole can and I intended to use every drop! I apologize for the shoddy pictures, the lighting in my garage was playing hell with my camera.

First up was to mask off where I wanted the paint to stop. I knew I had a limited amount of paint and a very large area to paint, so I tried to get the spots that I felt needed it the most. This is my masking job on the rocker area.

And how I masked off the engine bay.

And now in black!

The engine bay turned out really well actually.

I hit the rockers and floor pans next. The paint didn't go on as well here as the metal wasn't prepped as well as it was in the engine bay, but still, it went on alright.

And the bottom half of the rockers.

Finally, I wanted to hit the spare tire area, but since I was back there with paint, I got a little carried away.

Not many pictures but this took me all day to accomplish, haha.Next up is bondo and about 9 million years of sanding.

Alrighty, not a whole lot of noticeable work done this weekend, mostly just sanding, which when you take a picture of it, it appears like nothing has changed. So, I decided to test fit and drill my FRP front fenders.

The passenger side was a royal pain requiring the mold of the fender itself to be trimmed in several place to get it to fit and even then it still doesn't fit as well as the factory fenders. You can see the bolts on the front holding it in place here.

The mounting plate on the inside of the fender is too far forward so it doesn't line up with the mounting holes on the body at all. I'll need to make a plate to connect the two.

I marked the location of each bolt hole along the top of the fender and then put a cross line about a bolt and a half widths out to mark the position for my bolt holes.

And bolted up to the vehicle!

During all this, my fantastic girlfriend stripped the rest of the paint off the hood.

I put the driver side on as well and only one bolt hole was drilled in the wrong spot. Of all the holes I drilled this weekend, I only missed one! Fortunately, I think it's close enough that a washer will cover it up nicely.

With both front fenders fitted!

And that was as far as I got this weekend. Sanding and prep takes a huge amount of effort and time and yields very little game. I now understand why paint companies charge so much for a quality job!

It's time for me to get my hands on some bondo and to smooth out the body to perfection!

Alrighty, not much of an update because my weekend was filled with awesome (more on this later hopefully). I did manage to get a little work done in the few hours I did have available.

I got my hands on some body filler and then set out in an effort to create a car that looks smooth and awesome!

It looks like a huge amount of bondo, but most of this is getting sanded back.

I still think that something fell on the roof because this is just ridiculous. Still, the previous guys who restored this did a decent job of pulling most of the dents out, so it's just a fine layer of bondo to make it not wavy.

Also got a bit on the rockers too.

And from here on out, the sanding begins! I reckon I'll take off the majority of the bondo on there, leaving a decently smooth surface. Then its time for another round of bondo to get it closer to perfect!

During all of this though, my wonderful girlfriend started stripping the paint from the doors. She is awesome!

Well, serious progress is hard to gauge on this car, haha.I spent hours sanding, applying bondo, sanding some more and trying to get a smooth form going on. This hours worth of work means that in photos, the car looks identical to how it did at the beginning of the weekend.

Nevertheless, if you look hard enough, you can see that the body is indeed looking smoother and smoother.

There are still some high/low spots that need to be sanded and fixed, but it's much, much closer to being smooth.

I'm still working with the coarse bondo and as soon as I get it 90% done with the coarse bondo, I will switch to the fine bondo and make it 100%.

Progress is slow, but it is happening! I hope to have it in the painters over Christmas (along with putting another project I've been keeping on the hush-hush into the painters over Christmas as well).

Outstanding work so far dude. I'll give you a helping hand real soon. As a suggestion, and maybe you already know, to push the bondo HARD into the trouble areas. This helps the bondo from creating tiny air pockets that can show themselves during the knock down process.

Short little update. I've done a bit more sanding and the shape is really coming together. I put on the fine bondo this past weekend and the difference from the coarse bondo is immediately noticeable! The coarse bondo is thick like play-do but the fine bondo is runny and much thinner. I haven't gotten around to sanding that just yet, but that's on my to-do list for this week. While I was mucking about with that, my lovely girlfriend got one of the doors all stripped.

Then she started in on the second door and came across this sticker (that someone obviously did a poor job of masking off while doing the blue repaint). It's just information on tire inflation pressures and tire sizes, but it's still pretty cool. So we snapped this picture and she'll reconstruct it on the computer.

This was as far as she got on the second door before we called it a night.

More updates to come this week as I get out and sand on the body work!

Alright, we had a long weekend, so I got out there and got my butt in gear. Which doesn't mean much because hours of sanding yields very little in the way of photographic progress. Still, I took pictures anyways!

First up was applying more bondo to sand smooth.

The roof and this fender are the biggest trouble spots as they were quite wavy.

While that was drying my lovely girlfriend finished stripping all the paint from the door!

So, she started in on anything else that was blue on the car.

Resulting in this very clean trunk weatherstrip area.

She then progressed to the small bits surrounding the front and rear glass and pulled all the remaining blue from there as well.

She is way more patient and steady than I could ever be. I'm such a lucky dude to have one of the greatest girlfriends of all time! This was the resulting destruction from the doors and thin areas that she stripped.

Since she was now out of a job to do, she wanted to know if she could help me sand. Hell yeah! So we got a pretty good team going on. She works with the electric sander while I follow her and smooth everything out by hand.

You can see that our work is starting to pay off a bit, here's the rear fender getting closer to perfectly smooth.

The roof is progressing quite well too!

I spent a lot of time on the hood working the front corner out by hand. Since it's a complex curve, pretty much the only option is to handle this one by hand. Here it is about half way there.

I was really upset with how difficult this fender was turning out to be, thinking it would never get done right.

I'm quite happy with it now though. Just a few more finishing touches and it should be set!

We're really progressing along nicely and it's about time to flip the car around so I can work on the passenger side (which is in much better shape than the driver side). We still have some work to do on the front fenders (I have to drill those big scary holes for the fender mirrors) and the doors, but those will be much easier in comparison to the body. It'll definitely be done and ready to go before the end of December (which is when it goes to the paint shop)!

Beautiful work. Also, you are indeed a lucky man to have such a wonderful girlfriend. I'm in the same boat and trust me, it's a rare one!

Keep it up my man... That is going to be one beautiful car when it's all buttoned up!

Thanks for the comment! She's been down there everyday after work with me helping sand and apply putty. The car would not be where it is today without her help and support. She's the greatest! If your significant other is anything like mine, then she's definitely a keeper!

Alright, so I've gotten a bit more work done on the old girl this week. First and foremost was flipping the car around, so the nose is now facing the other direction. This give me much more room to work on the passenger side rear fender.

Here's a picture with the flash. You can see that the flash reflected off all the tiny bondo particles that were stirred up by moving the car. Sanding bondo puts dust on everything.

Here we applied just a little more in the way of thin layers of bondo to just make everything perfectly smooth.

This is the passenger side rear fender that's quite wavy (and the reason I flipped the car around). This is the coarse bondo laid on pretty thick so we can take it back to where we want it to be. I can't manage to put this thick bondo on smooth at all. So, instead I build it up pretty thick and then sand a majority of it back to get it decently smooth. Then the fine bondo goes on top of this to make it look pretty.

After that dried I started in on the trunk lid. Here I've removed most of the rust and made it decently smooth. Then I painted on some rust neutralizer that was supplied to me from Classic Car Nagoya. This stuff takes forever to dry, but it's like the Japanese version of POR-15.

I had put the fenders on because I wanted to make them smooth and clean and it's so much easier to do this when they're mounted to something. So, next I started on the seam at the front of the fender that connected two pieces of fiberglass. Here it is all sanded down and smooth.

The other reason I had the fenders on was so I could put holes in them for the fender mirrors and the side markers. Here's my measurement for where the fender mirror on the passenger side will sit.

And the driver side.

Then came the harrowing moment where I had to drill a hole in my nice fenders.

I still have to drill smaller holes to the front and rear of these hole and haven't yet started the side marker holes, but for the most part, I'm very happy with how well this turned out.

While working on the passenger side rear fender, I noticed that there was some left over bondo on the bottom rear of the fender. So, I ground all the bondo off and found this.

It's hard to see, but there are a bunch of pin holes and two large dents at the bottom. Since this piece can't be accessed from the inside, the previous owner just lathered on bondo. I at least wanted the shape to be kind of close, so I got to work on it.

Again, hard to see, but the pin holes are 95% welded up and cleaned up and one of the major dents pulled. I pulled the dent by welding an M10 bolt to the center of the dent and then tugging on the bolt until the metal bent back into shape. This should cut down the amount of bondo needed by at least 75%. (Side note: The weird stuff that looks like glue is actually melted rubber from the pads on my gloves; I ran my fingers across the ground down surface to see how smooth it was a little too soon.)

That's as far as we've come this week. I've got a lot of work planned for the weekend, so hopefully I should be able to get another good update in pretty soon!

Nice catch on the fender! Glad you could take care of it now, rather than "discovering" it after paint and finish. Why did you go for the Japanese POR-15 as opposed to what you already had?

I'm glad I caught it now too. Much better to catch it now and do the best I can at fixing it as opposed dropping the car off at Classic Car Nagoya for paint and having the Shacho catch it. I'd catch hell for days for not noticing it, haha.

I went for the Japanese stuff because I'm out of POR-15 and the only place that sells it around here is an hour drive one way and it costs 100 bucks a can. The Japanese stuff was at Classic and much cheaper, haha.

I need a weekend from my weekends, haha.So, I started putting on the final thin layer of bondo on Friday. It was to be the last layer of bondo for a majority of the panels. I pasted it on thin and was all set to button up a huge amount of the car this weekend. Then, when I went to check it a full day later (this stuff is supposed to harden in 30 minutes) it wasn't hard and the color was too white. I didn't mix in enough hardener. So, out came the grinder and all that bondo had to come right back off. Cost me hours worth of work. Still, I got right back into and got the final layers going!

This final layer of bondo is paper thin in most places. Just trying to keep the metal from being wavy.

There's a pretty big wave in the lower part of the rear fender where I pulled the dent and short of removing the whole rear fender and working on it with a hammer and dolly (tools that I don't have), it's just going to take some filler.

And here it is after the new final layer hardened and I went at it with a sander. The roof is about as smooth as I can make it. It's still got some minor high/low spots here and there, but I'm afraid that if I keep messing with it, I'll just make it worse. Figure it's best to quit while I'm ahead on this one.

The fender with the exception of the lower rear were I pulled the dent is finished as well. It's very smooth and you can feel no seams or anything along it.

There's turning out to be way more bondo involved in getting the body to look straight than I had initially anticipated. The proper way to do the body work on this would have been to pull it completely apart (rear fenders off, car on a rotisserie, etc.) and work the metal by hand until the metal itself is perfectly smooth. The problem with that is that it takes years to get everything just right. If I ever get upset with the body work on this one a few years down the road, perhaps I'll tear it back apart and do just that. Of course, I'll need a much bigger garage!

Still, it should look pretty good when all is said and done!Thanks for looking guys!

After letting the rust stop completely neutralize the rust and get solid, I slathered on a very thin layer of putty then sanded that down to be nice and smooth. The results did not disappoint!

Next, I finally gathered up some guts and took a drill to my front fenders. Certainly a terrifying thing to do, but after much thought, I figured it was better now than when it has paint on it.

Next I lifted her up and put her on some stands to make work on the bottom of the rockers much easier.

I feel like I can finally start seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is all hazy from the dust in the garage! This is how much had stacked up on the cross-member, and that was hidden under the hood!

Crazy! Good thing I have a good mask. Soon she'll be all ready to go. I have just a little smoothing out of the bottom of the rockers at the front (where I welded new steel in) and a couple of places on the doors that need a little bit of effort and then it's time to tote this thing off to Classic Car Nagoya for paint!